1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to data processing and communication systems, more particularly, to a system and a method of seamlessly linking, categorizing and storing paper documents originating from a physical file folder in digital form, eliminating the paper documents, and storing and retrieving digital documents from a conventional file storage system.
2. Description of Related Art
Billions of paper documents originating from digital files are printed and filed each year. Most of these documents originate in some sort of digital form, such as a word processing document, a scanned document or an email. However, upon retrieval, they are not easily available or available at all in their original digital form or, if they are, they are not easily found if found at all.
The goal of any business, government organization, or any other type of organization is to reduce paper and to transform paper documents originating from digital file documents to digital documents that are easily categorized and located.
At the current time, many paper documents that originate from digital documents are printed, stored and/or filed in conventional file cabinets or storage systems. One of the reasons for the above system is to provide a convenient way to store and organize these paper documents for retrieval at a later time. However, once the paper documents, which sometimes originate from digital form, are retrieved they are not easily linked back to the original digital files from which they were created.
Therefore, a need exists for a system and a method of storing and retrieving paperless digital files in a conventional file storage system without printing out the paper documents. A need also exists for a method to allow multiple users to be able to access the same digital file and, therefore to allow multiple parties access to information in the digital file, and the digital file themselves, e.g. for editing, reviewing, etc.